Demons

by Bill Pronzini

  Seven o’clock.

  I couldn’t get my mind off Kerry. Memories… so damned many memories. The first time we’d made love, after she’d done most of the seducing. “Ask me if I want to go to bed,” she’d said, and I’d said, “Do you want to go to bed?” And she’d said, “I thought you’d never ask,” and took my hand and led me like a kid into my own bedroom. The way she’d looked and the way she’d cried when I showed up at her door after the Deer Run nightmare. An afternoon we’d spent wandering among tide pools near Carmel. A night in a fancy motel in the Napa Valley, the two of us splashing like kids in one of those big in-room Jacuzzi tubs.

  Other memories, too, not nearly so pleasant. Kerry saying, “I think it would be better if we didn’t see each other for a while,” and then walking out of my old office on Drumm Street-the first time I thought I was losing her. And Kerry lying crumpled and bloody on the floor of my closet, not so long ago, beaten unconscious by a man who was after me…

  Seven-thirty.

  I got up and paced around, thinking: What a wreck I am. An old derelict floundering in heavy seas, looking for steerage back into a safe harbor.

  The image that little metaphor conjured up made me laugh out loud. At myself, sardonically. An old derelict? A more apt description was of something darting around underwater, not floundering on top of it, something small and bright and silly: one of Walter Merchant’s clownflsh.

  Eight o’clock, and eight-thirty, and nine.

  I went in and took a hot bath. That usually starts the phone ringing off its hook, but not tonight. Out with Blessing again-where the hell else would she be? Driving me crazy. Down in the dumps. Baby, have pity on me.

  But she didn’t.

  The phone stayed silent.

  CHAPTER 20

  TAG END OF SUMMER IN Lake County: hot, dry, the hills all brown and dusty and crawling with rattlesnakes, the hordes of vacationers and summer residents and beer-swilling youths thinning as the new school year approached-though at night they would still swarm as thickly as the mosquitoes and gnats. Lakeport and the other resort communities come alive in late May, thrive from mid-June to mid-September, and are done blooming by the first of October. The rest of the year-except for bass-fishing season, and year-round activities at Konocti Harbor Inn on the south shore-they’re pretty much the domain of retirees, small business services, and vacation-industry people making preparations for next summer’s influx.

  I came in on Highway 20 from Ukiah, past Blue Lake and along the northern rim of Clear Lake. Even though it was Monday, traffic was heavy on the two-lane highway-slowed and clogged by cars and campers and behemoth motor homes and pickups towing boats. The midday heat was intense; I was simmering in my own sweat by the time I rolled into Nice.

  At one time I’d driven up here once or twice a year, mostly by myself, to fish for bass and catfish at Rodman Slough, midway between Nice and Lakeport. I remembered the last trip, four or five years ago. Eberhardt had come along and we’d rented a lakeside cabin in Lucerne. He’d caught two fat white cats the first morning, six pounders, and I’d caught some channel cats and a bullhead; we’d had fish fries three nights running, and drunk a couple of cases of beer each, and taken the rented boat all the way down to Jago Bay at the southern tip. We’d had a fine time… or at least I had. But when I’d suggested going back the following year, Eberhardt had backed out without much explanation.

  Now, maybe, I knew why.

  Damn the way things work out sometimes.

  Nice hadn’t changed much; I would have been surprised if it had. Lake County isn’t affluent, and with the exception of small, upscale new communities at Soda Bay and Konocti Harbor, its resorts cater to young party animals and down-home middle-class adults who don’t need fancy golf courses, tennis courts, and nightclubs to enjoy their summer vacations. Give them a small boat, a funky old tourist cabin, a good cheap restaurant, and a bar that has dancing to live country and western bands on weekends, and they’re content. From what I knew of Nedra Merchant, she didn’t fit into that down-home category-but then you never know about people. Maybe she had enough sophistication in the city and came up here for the change. Or maybe she hadn’t come here of her own volition, back in May. Or maybe she’d never come here at all…

  The village had the same unassuming, countrified look and feel that it had had forty years ago, the first time I’d visited here, and that it had probably had for decades before that. All that had been added recently were a few more houses on the steep folded hills rising inland from the lakeshore, at least one new restaurant and some junk shops masquerading as purveyors of antiques. If I’d been in a different mood, without so much weighing on my mind, I would have felt good coming back here. As it was, what I felt was relief that the long, hot trip was over.

  Lakeview Drive hooked up off the main road; I turned there, wound my way along the lower reaches of the dry brown hills until I came to a sign that said Thornapple Way. It wasn’t much of a street, just a two-block extension of asphalt that ran steeply up one side of a broad humpback. There were three houses on it, two down close to Lakeview Drive and the other atop the dogleg at the upper end, built into a notch in the hillside.

  I drove up to the one in the notch: start at the top. No cars were parked at any of the three; the upper one had a garage, but it was closed and windowless. Nobody answered the bell there, or at either of the lower two. The middle one had its shutters up already, which no doubt meant the owners had closed it up and gone home. There were no names on mailboxes or anywhere else on the three properties.

  Only one of the nearby houses on Lakeview Drive was occupied, by a thin middle-aged woman who didn’t want to be bothered by somebody she didn’t know on an errand she had no interest in. She had no idea who owned any of the houses on Thornapple Way, she said, which may or may not have been the truth. Ditto her claim, when I showed her the photo of Nedra Merchant, that she’d never seen the woman before. She minded her own business, she said, which was more than she could say for some people. Whereupon she shut her door in my face.

  Friendly folk in the country. Or more likely, she was a city transplant who hadn’t yet learned country ways and country manners and probably never would.

  ***

  LAKEPORT HAD NOT CHANGED much either. More people lived there-about a quarter of the county’s population now-and its outskirts had expanded, in particular toward Kelseyville to the south. But its downtown area, along the lakefront, still had a pleasant old-fashioned atmosphere despite the noisy, garishly dressed and undressed summer people who clotted its streets, sidewalks, municipal park, and boat landing.

  The hundred-year-old courthouse in the town square had been turned into a museum; the new courthouse, much larger and institutional-modern in design, rose up on the block behind it. I parked on Forbes Street and went into the new one. The county assessor’s office was on the second floor. The woman clerk in there was polite and helpful; for a small fee she punched up the ownership records for the three houses on Thornapple Way.

  Two of the names meant nothing to me. The third was Nedra Adams Merchant. She’d owned the property at number eight Thornapple Way a little less than two years, having had full title deeded over to her by the former owner. The purchase price had been twenty-five thousand dollars, a ridiculously low sum considering that the property’s assessed value was five times that amount. The price didn’t surprise me any more than the former owner’s name.

  The Liar, Dean Purchase.

  ***

  SO NOW I HAD CONFIRMATION that Purchase had been mixed up big-time with Nedra Merchant. But the fact that he’d lied to me about that didn’t necessarily mean he’d had anything to do with her disappearance. Or had any knowledge of the reasons behind it.

  Was he involved or not? Had she come up here in May or not? Been living in her summer home all or part or none of the past three and a half months? Written and mailed those postcards to Dr. Muncon and Annette Olroyd? Was she here now, alive or dead?


  I drove fast back around the northern rim of the lake. The answers to at least some of those questions were waiting for me at number eight Thornapple Way.

  ***

  NUMBER EIGHT WAS THE UPPERMOST of the street’s three houses, the one built into the notch atop the dogleg. It was a smallish place, narrow and two-storied, of a contemporary modular style that didn’t blend in too well with the oaks and madrone and redbuds that flanked it. Its best feature was a terrace-size cedar deck that extended all along the ground-floor front and partway around on the far side. From out there you had a panoramic view: all of Clear Lake, silvery blue under the hot midday sun and loaded with boats and water skiers; the Mayacamas Mountains to the west and the ragged jut of Cobb Mountain to the south. The two-car garage was set apart from the house and slightly above it. Past the garage and farther up the hillside, a path led to a private picnic area shaded by huge heritage oaks.

  I parked where I had earlier, in the short driveway that connected the garage to the street. It was quiet up here, a thick midday hush broken only by a squalling jay and the faint drifting whine of powerboats down on the lake. Heat hammered at me, driving more sweat out of my pores. The summer smells of dust, dry grass, tree spice, and lake water were so strong they made my nostrils itch-and gave me a rush of childhood nostalgia that was as powerful as a drug.

  Over to the house first, to ring the bell again. Empty echoes and no response. There was a rumpled screen door that opened outward; I opened it and laid a hand on the inner door’s knob. It didn’t yield when I turned it. I shut the screen, moved over to the nearest window. Yellow twill drapes were pulled tight together inside. I wandered around to the deck area on the south side. A pair of sliding glass doors, another set of tight-drawn drapes. Near the window was a Weber that hadn’t been used in some time: when I lifted the hood-shaped lid I found a rusted grill and lots of spider silk. The rest of that section of deck was barren. So was the long front part except for a couple of molded plastic chairs.

  I returned to the garage. It had a pair of manually operated pull-up doors; both were secure. I circled the building. No other doors and no windows. But it had been built of pine boards that had begun to weather, and on the back side a gap had warped open between two of the planks. On one, in the middle of the gap, was a loose pine knot. I went and got the flashlight out of the car. Back behind the garage, I used my Swiss Army knife to pry out the loose knot and widen the gap. Then I laid the flashlight’s lens at an angle next to the opening, switched it on, and leaned close to squint one-eyed inside.

  One car in there, an ice-blue color. I couldn’t tell what it was at first, couldn’t see any of the license plate. I fiddled around with the light and my angle of vision until more of the front end-and all of the hood ornament-came into view.

  Mercedes. Fairly new, too, probably last year’s model.

  Nedra Merchant’s car.

  ***

  I MIGHT HAVE BEEN ABLE to pick one of the garage door locks, but it would have taken time and my chances of finding answers were better inside the house. The front door behind the screen had a dead-bolt lock on it; forget that. The adjacent window, also screened, had a simple catch lock, but the frame was down tight against the sill and there was no way I could wiggle a knife blade underneath to slip the catch. When I took a look at the sliding glass doors I saw that I couldn’t get in through there either. Catch-locked, and judging from one door’s refusal to budge even a little when I tugged on it, it was also fitted with a roller-bolt security lock at the bottom.

  On the side nearest the garage were kitchen windows, at a level too high for me to see into. The sliding variety, screened on the outside. I stood for a few seconds, cleaning sweat off my face, scanning the area. A car drifted past on Lakeview Drive and disappeared; out of sight the other way, somebody began using a noisy leaf blower or chain saw. Otherwise, I seemed to have this portion of the hillside to myself. Dusty oaks and limp-looking redbuds grew densely on the far side of Thornapple Way-an effective screen between me and the houses beyond. Higher up, there was nothing except power lines and a long crease where two ground folds met that was choked with brush and deadfall, a fire hazard that ought to have been cleaned out.

  Some cordwood was stacked against the garage wall. I poked among it until I found a thick, unsplit chunk about two feet long. Back to the house, where I wedged the log down under the kitchen windows. When I climbed up on top of it I could rest my arms on the narrow sill and look inside past frilly yellow-and-white curtains. Not that there was anything to see except a standard bare-bones kitchen.

  I gave my attention to the windows. They were locked, but the catch didn’t look like much: the weakest security point in a high percentage of homes, old and new, is the kitchen windows. The screen popped out with one tug; I lifted it down. Then I went to work on the window catch with my knife and brute force.

  When the thing finally gave under a hard yank, I lost my balance and fell sideways off the log and banged my knee, bruised my thigh on the flashlight I’d tucked into my pants pocket. I did some cussing, feeling clumsy and foolish. Damn me for the big clown I was! I picked myself up and hobbled around until the pain subsided. The flashlight hadn’t been damaged, small miracle. I clipped it to my belt in back, which is what I should have done in the first place.

  I righted the log, climbed onto it again. Slid the window open as far as it would go. The opening looked wide enough for me to wiggle through. Another check of my surroundings, and up I went, using my forearms for leverage, shoes scrabbling against the wall. It took me more than a minute to haul my body through and get a foot anchored on the sink drainboard.

  In getting the foot down I dislodged a plate and a glass, sent them toppling to shatter on the floor. The plate and glass were dirty, recently dirty: bits of food and some kind of brownish liquid flew up with the shards. More dishes were stacked on the drainboard and in the sink; those, too, had been used not so long ago. By Nedra Merchant? Or by somebody else?

  I swung down to the floor, took a closer look at the dishes. No residue of lipstick or anything else that might tell me the user’s gender or identity. Or whether one person or two or more had eaten off them.

  Through an open doorway I could see the front hall and part of the staircase to the upper floor. I headed that way. Closed up as it was, the place was stifling; I had trouble taking in the dust-clogged air. Across the hall, the living room waited in shadowed neatness. More of Nedra Merchant’s poster-work adorned the walls in there, but otherwise the room contained nothing of hers. The furniture was of good quality, but it ran to leather and dark wood: Dean Purchase’s taste, not hers. Either she hadn’t gotten around to replacing it or she liked it as it was.

  Dripping sweat, I climbed the stairs and prowled through the two bedrooms and bathroom on the upper level. One bedroom hadn’t been used in a long while; the other had been occupied as recently as last night. The double bed in that one was rumpled, the bottom sheet pulled half off the mattress, the upper sheet and a light blanket wadded at the foot. There was a stain of some kind on the bottom sheet… Christ, semen?

  On the floor next to the bed, its lid raised, sat a Gucci suitcase-either a part of the set of luggage in the storeroom at Nedra’s city house, or a twin. The case was three-quarters full of light summer clothing, all in the bright colors and Oriental style she favored; there was also some lingerie. Newly arrived and not yet completely unpacked? Or getting ready to leave and not yet completely packed? I couldn’t tell which.

  The closet held a few more of her summer things, plus a man’s robe and a man’s silk aloha shirt-both of medium size. Shoes, a spare purse… otherwise the cupboard was bare. Nothing in the dresser other than a couple of skimpy swimsuits. And nothing on or in either of the nightstands.

  The bathroom was another bust. So was the downstairs toilet. In the kitchen again, I opened the refrigerator. Bread, milk, cold cuts and cheese, a carton half full of deli potato salad-all fresh, no more than a couple of days old. Tw
o bottles of dark stout, a jar of mustard, another of green olives. In the freezer compartment, a pint container of Haagen-Dazs rum-raisin ice cream with one small scoop out of it.

  When I shut the freezer door the leaf blower or chain saw noise from downhill quit abruptly, and the silence in there turned as thick and clotted as the trapped heat. Or did it? I thought I heard something-faint, faraway, inside rather than outside the house. But when I stood rigid and strained to listen. I couldn’t identify it or its source. Maybe if I shut the window… I reached up and slid it closed, listened again.

  Now I was sure I heard something. A kind of humming, fluttery sound. Refrigerator motor? No, it wasn’t like that. It was like… a fan going somewhere, a small electric fan.

  But if a fan was running in here, I couldn’t figure where. I’d been through every room in the house-

  That door in the back wall, next to the stove. Where did that lead?

  I’d noticed the door earlier, but I hadn’t really paid much attention to it. Kitchens have doors to pantries, storage closets; you take them for granted, don’t focus on them unless you have a reason to. Now I had a reason. And the first thing I saw when I got close to this door was that it was outfitted with a new-looking Schlage knob-and-lock plate, and an equally new-looking eyebolt lock mounted above.

  Why lock a pantry? Why put two locks on a pantry door?

  I pressed my ear against the heavy wood panel. The fluttery hum was coming from the other side-definitely some kind of electric fan. I worked the eyebolt free of its hasp, slid it back. But the key lock below had been turned and it was a dead-bolt, not the kind you can pop with a knife blade or credit card. Dead-bolt locks are also damned hard to pick, even by somebody with professional or semiprofessional skills.